The Death Doll
by SrslyNo
Summary: Wilson has a recurring dream from adolescence that still haunts him & causes him to be concerned for House. A peek into Wilson’s youth and family, as well as his psyche. Slight spoiler for The Softer Side. If you like creepy, dark & sad, you'll love this.


**Went to see "Coraline" the other day. Brought home teh creepy and introduced the mood to an old nightmare.**

**Warnings: Ever so slight spoiler for "The Softer Side." Not a deathfic, but a peripheral OC bites the dust. Creepy, scary and dark! Oh my! :P Did I mention, angst and sad?**

**Disclaimer:** Production credits in Bad Hat Harry Productions do not list my name and never will.

**Beta:** All my thanks to bookfan85 and leakey_lover for their suggestions and support.

* * *

When Jimmy reached that awkward age between boy and man, studying the haftorah three times a week with the Rabbi. Preparing for his bar mitzvah. Growing so fast you could almost hear his bones creak and see too much wrist between his hands and his cuffs….

…When he first began rolling up his shirtsleeves to his elbows.

That was the first time he dreamed about the death doll.

*

One hot and muggy New Jersey Sunday Jimmy was leaning against the doorjamb of his grandmother's dining room, perfecting his casual pose, concealing the inner turmoil he felt as he watched the weekly family drama unfold. Ever since he could remember, Sundays ended with his parents, uncles, and aunts arguing with their stubborn mother.

The nana he loved and who loved him in return was a different woman with her children.

He quietly let out a sigh. This evening was going to unravel like all the others. A three-act play with no resolution.

Opening curtain: Everyone gathered with happy exclamations, hugs, and kisses.

The second act began with adults surrounding a lace-draped walnut dining room table, more laughter and voices growing louder as one sibling or in-law made jokes and teased at the expense of another. All the while consuming course after course of the matriarch's delicious but heavy food. Jimmy was still at the children's table. Family dynamics like gravity must fall back to earth at some point. By the end of the meal the high spirits stopped fizzing like the stale soda in everyone's glasses, resembling the careless red wine stain sprawling across the tablecloth.

The third act was little more than a shouting match.

When Jimmy brought his case before his father, explaining that he no longer wanted to attend these dinners because of all the screaming, his father refused his request, shrugging his shoulders as he explained, "How else would you know when it's time to leave?"

He never understood what his grandmother was rattling on about. Pouring her grievances out in Yiddish. But her offspring did, and responded to her in Yinglish, bridging most of the lingual gaps for him. His Nana accused her sons, daughters, and respective spouses of high crimes and misdemeanors: disrespect and disloyalty to God, and therefore to her. She was Inquisitor, Rabbi, Pope, and Judge. No one left her house without first hearing an accounting of their sins for the past week.

He caught the faded blue eyes of his grandfather, Poppa Max, and they traded smiles and secret messages of reassurance. Jimmy idolized this saintly man who for fifty years ingested daily doses of verbal abuse from his wife as if it were vitamins, never complaining or saying "boo." As Jimmy grew up he never heard his grandfather raise his voice over any subject. Poppa skillfully distanced himself in the weekend skirmishes, having learned Zen from the Talmud.

Jimmy hated the uproar but learned by watching. The only way to make the inferno stop was wait until the furnace ran out of fuel.

When the volcano finished spewing, the women congregated in the kitchen to lick their wounds, wash, dry, and store dishes.

The curtain call neared.

On his way to the backyard for a smoke, Uncle Mitch passed Jimmy in the doorway, pinching his cheek in his customary rough way, coaxing pain and a wince from the chocolate brown eyes as the New York-drenched accent questioned, "So what's new with you, Bubbelah? Bet you drive the girls wild with that pretty face of yours, right? Am I right?"

With an awkward smile and a shake of his head, Jimmy fled his uncle and headed for the safety of his brothers and cousins lounging on the mismatched, well-worn furniture in the living room. For the most part, they ignored the chatter of the television in favor of a lively discussion about Luke and Laura's wedding. When Jimmy finally felt relaxed and ready to join the conversation, his father entered the room. Without uttering a word, he caught the attention of his three sons, and tilted his head toward the front door. The Wilson boys stood up as one and eagerly made their getaway after dutifully kissing their grandparent's wrinkled, papery cheeks.

* * *

That hot September Sunday could have been the poster child for global warming if it was on anyone's mind at the time, but was not. The temperature plummeted five degrees when the sun dropped below the horizon, but the night did not bring relief. Suffocating and cloying humidity crowded out the oxygen.

A bed sheet felt like a lead blanket in that heat. The waistband on Jimmy's boxers bit uncomfortably into his smooth, moist skin.

With windows wide open, Jimmy listened to the crickets' night song and the rhythmic spitting of the neighbor's water sprinklers as sweat crept down the back of his neck. His pillow turned from a cool, welcoming cloud to a clammy bag of packed sand.

Eventually, Jimmy, the heat, and the air combined into one, and sleep overcame him….

A woman appeared in his room. Gliding through his closed closet door. A white-on-white apparition dressed in serviceable bleached cotton tied at the neck and wrists, framing her face and hands. No feet. The hem hovered a foot above the floor.

A white mane of dense, straight, flaxen hair flowed down to her knees. Her misshapen skull stretched tight with a layer of white transparent flesh. Shadowed sunken sockets held fire opal, omniscient eyes that flickered orange and blue flame. Her elongated mouth, stolen from "The Scream," mimicked a silent howl.

Jimmy knew without being told, she was death's messenger.

As she drew close he tensed and tasted coppery fear on his tongue and lips. Or was that blood? Nearly upon him, she beckoned with long, spindly fingers, commanding him to join her.

He refused to move, opening his mouth to scream for help, but not the tiniest bleat issued from his lips. His throat ached from constricting muscles. Nothing. Breath sucked out of his lungs without so much as a hiss.

Her arms swept down upon him, and his body moved against his will.

Thick silence plugged his ears as his heartbeat stopped, and he squeezed his eyes shut in denial. Nonetheless, he viewed blackness through shuttered eyes.

Eternal nothingness.

He knew this was death. The first dark veil that descends upon the chosen victim….

His life was over.

*

No…not quite.

*

He was standing in his grandparent's bedroom. Inhaling the clean scent of freshly laundered linens and furniture wax.

His hearing returned with a duet of gentle, wheezing snores, Ruth resting her head on Max's shoulder. Such domestic bliss was the first assurance that this might only be a dream….

The wraith floated toward Ruth's side, drawing a small doll from a fold in her unadorned gown. A simply dressed, crude, muslin rag doll with stuffing made from Heaven and Hell, Paradise and Gehenna, Jannah and Jahannam, and every black hole in the universe.

The eyes were painted black ovals, but the mouth….

Goosebumps raced over his flesh. His sixth sense whispered that this effigy was no different than a loaded forty-five or a cup of poison-laced wine.

The emissary hung the doll over the headboard on an invisible wall hook right above his grandmother's head. Then she began moving her hands over the old woman in a mysterious fashion. Fingertips brushed close but never touched the body, coaxing a subhuman chord to thrum and an invisible mist to rise.

A lazy snake-like tendril spiraled and traveled along the headboard and up to the doll. As the translucent thread reached the tiny dress, the filmy finger took on purpose and darted into the doll's mouth….

Jimmy woke up with a start, gasping for air.

*

The dream, unlike any other he ever had, clung to him every waking moment over the next few days. Even at school, a white shirt or a hair flip from a very bleached blond flung him back into the center of the horror. In turn, his body involuntarily responded with a shudder.

All day Monday he expected to be called away from class, his mother waiting for him teary-eyed at the administration office. But not a class was interrupted.

When he arrived home, all was normal. Jonathan out with friends, David watching TV. His folks arriving home from work at the usual hour.

On Wednesday, as Jimmy sat with the Rabbi studiously working to fluidly wrap his tongue around a Hebrew chant, he had nearly forgot about the nightmare, but not quite. He took advantage of his religion and silently prayed for his grandmother's protection.

The following Sunday, his family sat shiva.

There was never a clue up until the feisty woman died that anything was wrong with her. She was playing poker with her husband and friends. Later, his grandfather tearfully explained, he thought she had leaned over in an uncustomary moment of affection, resting against him while she waited for the others to call or raise her hand.

In the time five people folded their cards, she slipped away.

Jimmy listened intently. His grandfather's description of his grandmother meshed exactly with what he had seen in his night terror.

* * *

And so the years went by for Jimmy, transforming him into Wilson as he traveled the same night journey with other family members, friends, and, in due course, his patients.

No roommate, girlfriend, or wife knew how he feared the first moments of sleep when the gateway opened for the woman he thought of as The Messenger and her death doll.

Besides despairing of the experience, Wilson railed at the unpredictability. Why did he dream about the deaths of some and not others? There was no logic to comfort him.

He had no warning when the man with the indelicate fingers, Uncle Mitch, died of cancer.

And Amber. No clue.

And yet, Wilson was startled awake before dawn when he saw a death doll pinned upon a whitewashed wall above a bed where the figure of Grace lay sleeping.

No need to open the small note sent to him two weeks later from her family. He knew what the message would announce.

All this nagged at Wilson. A puzzle better suited to House, though he would rather witness death's portends every night than confess his experience to him and be mocked every day.

He could not make sense of it or find a pattern. All relationships or non-, illnesses, or accidents were possible. Even the waiting period was erratic. He could wake up to have his nightmare immediately confirmed or might have to wait as long as a week.

The only chilly constant was that no one escaped death after The Messenger paid him a visit.

When Wilson chose oncology, he came as close as he ever would to making peace with the specter and her doll. They were his training ground for his specialty—standing and watching over people who were marked to die. He was a suitable usher in the world of the living.

House had accused him of not dealing well with unexpected deaths. If only House knew the whole story.

House. Always the exception to the rule. With House's thirst for knowledge about the unknown coupled with his self-destructiveness, House belonged on the species endangerment list, slated for extinction.

And yet, after all these years, The Messenger never guided Wilson to House's bedroom.

Infarctions, bullets, overdoses, bus accidents, cardiac arrest, and arrested breathing—his early-warning detection system never kicked in.

He bitterly cursed the Destroyer of his dreams. The Empress of his nightmares. She never offered the faintest sign about House.

Finally the epiphany struck him. Why _would_ he have that dream? House survived. He survived it all.

So Wilson resigned himself to nagging his best friend and quietly worrying. And he prayed never to see a death doll over House's bed.

Because all he would be able to do is weep.

_~fin~_

_Thank you for reading. All comments welcome any time._


End file.
